


Weeping Pianist

by AlexClaain



Category: Pandora Hearts
Genre: Angst, M/M, OS, One Shot, and alot of pain, and possibly some of you, at least for me, over 100 years post manga, reincarnation shit with elliot, too much angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-29
Updated: 2018-11-29
Packaged: 2019-09-02 08:50:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,177
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16783657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlexClaain/pseuds/AlexClaain
Summary: [HEAVY SPOILERS | Elleo | Present] The tragedy was over, the peace restored. Decades passed, along with Leo's life. He had lasted surprisingly long as Glen, but even his time had to come to an end. With a body soaked in the energy of the Abyss and all the chains that had accompanied him for years, it was not surprising that his corpse had met the same fate as Levis. Leo, too, became a chain. But even though the Baskervilles kept a close eye on the new Glen, the Chain never showed itself. It seemed to follow someone else as their master... but whom?





	Weeping Pianist

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ApeironStella](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ApeironStella/gifts).



"Your chain has to come with us."

It was only a sentence; an order. The group in front of him, wrapped up in blood-red cloaks, had been demanding his partner: the pianist in his shadow. Elliot could barely remember how he'd gotten to the schoolyard. Instead, a loud whirring sound had spread within his head and her words barely got through to him. He was dangerous, they said - a threat to everyone. Dazed by the whole situation, he just shook his head over and over again. He wanted to say something, wanted to fight back – and for a moment he had even thought of running away, but his body just wouldn‘t obey.

Were those people the cause of every tear that had escaped _him_ through the years?

Elliot‘s body went hot and cold. Anger flared up within his heart and he wanted to scream and confront them. He had so many questions, and they dammed up his throat with a lump. The words cut off his breath. He felt he was suffocating - and yet he remained his conciousness. An immense weight was put on his body and it took him a while to realize, that it wasn’t just his own mind, that held him captive.

"I'm sorry," said the woman in front of him. Elena, that was her name. Elliot could roughly remember her introduction. Following her words was the all-too-familiar whimper that started ringing in his ears. Something dragged the pianist out of his shadow and Elliot's heart began to race. With all of his strength he fought against the gauzy threads that held him captive in his position – but he just didn’t succeed.

A part of the group broke away from the rest. They ran around Elliot - their target firmly in sight. Once again he tried to say something. His lips barely opened and he searched the right words, but his lungs refused to cooperate and every word blurred before his eyes. Fighting with tears, he pulled his head out of the strings. He felt that it was useless; felt that he didn‘t had the strength to keep these people off their target - his friend. Slowly, he turned his head to one side and looked over his shoulder. "I'm sorry", he rasped quietly, before he broke out into tears.

And the next second, everything went black.

oOo

Elliot couldn‘t even remember how old he was, when it first stood before him. Deep at night a sob had broken the silence in his room and dragged him out of his sleep. Instead of standing up, he stopped moving entirely, eyes tightly closed, while trying to breathe as quitely as possible. His right hand, which he had gradually pushed underneath his pillow, grabbed for his wooden sword. With his body trembling and heart racing in his little chest, he had needed all his strength not to call for his big sister.

He remembered the hours going by torturously slow that night, but nontheless the sobs never left his side. Completely exhausted by the constant fear, Elliot forced himself to open his eyes after a while. Before that, he struggled with himself for quite a while, pondering about whether Edwin would have had the courage to do the same. Encouraged by the realization that a true knight wouldn’t close his eyes to a potential danger, his eyelids ultimately lifted slowly. 

He didn’t have to search very long for the source of the sound - a black figure was standing right in front of his bed. Its outline tore a sharp, black hole in the remaining darkness of his room. A shadow, darker than the night itself, stood by his bedside table and looked down at him. Tears flowed down its cheeks and dripped from its chin onto the carpet of his room.

After that night the shadow never left his side again. During the day, one could recognize the outline of a young man. He had no face, no details, no real depth. It looked like a black hole that had opened right in front of Elliot. The only thing that gave away that it even had a face was the endless stream of tears. Always sobbing and crying, it barely left room for peace and quiet in Elliot's life. At the beginning, the whole situation had been overwhelming him. Countless times he had yelled at his dark partner; countless toys had been thrown at the shadow. Every day the infinite nothingness in front of him swallowed all of the insults Elliot spit out. There were even times when Elliot had grabbed his wooden sword firmly, ready to try to put an end to it - but in the end, he never did.

With the years of living side by side, Elliot ultimately learned to handle its existence. He found out that holding its hands had a similar calming effect as reading books together. However, it reacted even more strongly to the moments in which Elliot played for it on his piano. The sobs softened every so often as it sat down beside him on the stool. Whenever Elliot played _Statice_ , its tears stopped running. With the years going by, he had finally accepted his fate being entangled with theirs and given it a name - Weeping Pianist.

Within the presence of others, the pianist always hid in Elliot's shadow. Without any effort it disappeared into Elliots outline on the ground. Its sobs remained, but only Elliot himself could hear it. Especially in school, the constant noise gnawed at his attention, and the explanations barely reached his mind. Of course this ultimately had a negative effect on his grades, which is why a doctor prescribed him, on the instructions of his parents, without further ado, medication for ADHD.

Elliot was reluctant to swallow his medication. Every so often, he weighed the pills in his hand and stared at them, hoping they would dissolve by themselves. The list of side effects was long enough to leave a frown on his forehead whenever he read the package leaflet of his medication again. During his first few weeks of sleepless nights, Elliot had caught himself playing with the idea of telling others about the pianist at his side. But whenever his gaze swayed in its direction, catching the shadow once again trying to decipher the words within one of the books that had gathered around it over time, his mind went blank.

A certain feeling continued to grow within his heart every time he looked at the pianist. In the beginning, Elliot had guessed what he felt was simply a form of compassion. Over the years, however, he became painfully aware that this entity had become important to him. He didn’t even know if it had a home, what it wanted, or why it cried. Nevertheless, a tremendous need to protect it had spread unnoticed into every corner of his body. Its steady cry pierced Elliot's heart and haunted him in his nightmares. He wanted its suffering to end; wanted to find the reason for its deep grief and destroy it with his own hands... but he didn’t know where to start looking.

So he just swallowed his medication in silence, continued to play the piano every day, and read one book after the other with it. Whenever the deep pain returned, shaking his friend to its very core once again, he took his void-like hand and made sure to never let go.

Silently, Elliot would continue to sit up each night, watching the sobbing shadow in the corner of his room. The clock, as always, would tick relentlessly, reminding him of his lost sleep. Rubbing the fatigue from his eyes, he would once again slip out of his bed and crouch in front of the shadow. With his hand on its cheek, he would pull it into his arms, share its trembling and listen to the incomprehensible whimpering of the entity until late into the night.

"Nothing will separate us," Elliot would once more firmly reassure him and watch its tears die down for the time being, only to ultimately see them return a few hours later.

oOo

A familiar sound rang within Elliot's ear as he slowly pulled himself out of unconsciousness. Exhausted, he blinked a few times to focus himself before he carefully sat up to look around. The schoolyard had fallen into some sort of darkness and white lights were floating in the air. _Statice_ played softly in the background, fighting off the endless silence that would normally go hand in hand with the dark. Spread across the floor were numerous students struggling with serious injuries.

Gradually, the memories in his mind returned and the panic crept back into each of his limbs. The pianist, his shadow, stood before him. It trembled and cried; its voice sounded distorted and it broke again and again with its eyes fixed on Elena. Elliot didn’t have to think twice; he knew that his friend was the source of this mess. 

Elena stared at the entity. Her hands shook a little as she considered her next steps. Elliot wanted to help her, wanted to intervene, and put an end to all of this, but when he reached for the pianist's hand, a huge force pushed him backwards. His arms tore open at the rough asphalt. Surprised by the sudden pain, a faint hiss escaped him. His skin suddenly felt like it went up in flames and it took him a moment to gather himself. Blinking the tears out of the corner of his eyes, he looked after his shadow.

Elena's look had hardened. Her trembling had come to an end and a freezing cold surrounded the expression in her eyes. Slowly, she pulled a long, black sword from its scabbard, which had previously been hidden under her cloak, and pointed it at the entity, that had accompanied him all of his life.

He didn’t understand what was going on. He didn‘t understand what that being was. He wondered who these people were, why they were after his shadow, and why they wouldn‘t just leave it alone. However, the sight of the sword broke free a wave of emotions within Elliot's heart, and the longer he looked at it, the more he sensed he knew all the faces around him. Something in his head screamed, that this sword had once been his; that all these people knew him personally and shared a painful memory with him, which he had long forgotten.

His stomach twisted and a strong, stabbing pain spread within his head. He tried to think clearly, but all attempts went nowhere. Childish memories from his childhood shot from one end of his mind to the other. Arbitrary sentences, which he had once addressed to family members, echoed in his ears.

"I hate Humpty Dumpty, Vanessa! He is totally stupid!"

That stupid egg, Elliot had thought. He had always hated it in the children's book. Within a heartbeat he felt loathing eating through every fiber of his being and frustration following its trace. He wanted to understand, wanted to intervene - but instead childish memories and emotions tormented him. Desperately, he searched for answers in the eyes of Elena. Since her determination had been written all over her face, he had the strong feeling that he knew her, and for a moment he wondered where her glasses were.

It took a while before Elliot could push aside the deafening storm in his mind. The moment his attention returned to him, he realized that they no longer merely wanted to take his shadow with them. Elena had held the sword firmly in her hand with the decision to kill the entity - the "chain" - before her eyes.

Pure anger flooded his mind once more and threw all of his thoughts, doubts, and confusion out of his head as he stood up. He knew he wouldn‘t be able to put himself between the two of them in time, and yet he began to run. Taking a deep breath, he ordered, screaming at the top of his lungs:"Keep your hands off of him!"

Elena looked up and studied Elliot for a moment, before she put her eyes back on the chain in front of her. "Charlotte," she said calmly. The girl beside her, still a little shaken up by the pianist's first attack, nodded and raised her hand. It didn’t take long before Elliot found himself captured in the same threads he had once been in before. A frustrated scream escaped him as he fought powerlessly against the wires.

"Don’t hurt him!" He ordered or begged - he couldn‘t tell what his own voice sounded like, the panic setting in was too loud to even comprehend his own words. Tears ran down his cheeks as he looked at Elena. Furious, he shouted desperately: "LEO!"

Elena winced at his scream. Forcing herself not to pay him any attention, she kept her gaze on the chain in front of her. "I'm sorry, Elliot," she murmured, taking a step forward.

"I will not let you die by my hand a second time."

**Author's Note:**

> First of all: Thank you TeamSeaSlug for Beta-Reading my English translation!!! Please check out her works, she’s amazing! I wrote this OS as a gift for one of my dearest friends: ApeironStella. It is based on one of our countless Elleo-AUs. HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!!! ♥♥♥


End file.
